


dvitiya

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Gen, Wives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 14:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: She likes Madri better for it, after anger has beaten its way from her mind.





	dvitiya

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Golden_Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Daughter/gifts).



She thinks better of Madri, once her anger abates. To call upon gods who are bound together, to stay within the letter of the law and exceed its spirit, to hunger for more than is offered: these are things she can admire, even cast into a disadvantage by the cleverness of it.

It is a month before she can bear to speak to Madri, and she is happier for the distraction of motherhood than she has been any day in Yudhishtira’s little life. It is not that he requires care, six now and sober as a sage, nor Arjuna, a sweeter-tempered child than she would thought to birth from a night with a god of storms. But Bhima, forever attempting feats beyond his ability, could drive a hundred parents wild.

Pandu adores him, patiently suffers through a hundred wrestling matches, a thousand trees that demand to be climbed, picks leaves out of Bhima’s tangled hair and scrubs mud off his laughing face. “My storm-bringer,” he croons while Bhima rattles on about having seen a squirrel, and a doe with two fawns, and a snake that turned out to be an abandoned skin! “My fearless one.”

“I wish he would learn fear,” Kunti says, half to herself, but half to Madri, and turns to find her staring. “You disagree?”

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Madri admits. “I was going to prostrate myself the moment I’d given birth, and beg forgiveness.”

“Don’t do that, you’ll still be tender,” Kunti advises, unthinking. Scarcely a month pregnant, Madri is already beginning to swell. She’s such a little thing, a handspan shorter than Kunti herself and whipcord-lean like a warrior. They should be in Hastinapuri for this, with a hundred attendants hanging on her every word, not in the mountains repenting a curse laid on by some furious sage. Nothing good comes of the attention of sages, benign or baleful.

“I _wasn’t_ speaking to you,” she says when the silence has stretched between them like spun sugar. “Now I am. It was an ingenious trick, summoning twins to your bed.”

“I didn’t,” Madri protests, “not as a trick. We... what gods did you worship at home?”

“King Kuntibhoja worshipped Indra,” Kunti says, her skin still lightning-webbed from the god’s touch, even as his son is teething at her breast. “Many Yadavas do.”

“In Madradesh we worship the Ashvini twins, lords of horses and of healing. All my life when I have called upon gods for witness and succour I have sought their aid. Who else could I call, in such great need? I would not repay your kindness with deceit. I know how my life would have changed, had you set yourself against your husband’s new bride.”

“You would've been his _patrani_ , chosen for love.”

“Say rather his _upapatni_ , war-won, disliked by the god-touched bride his elders chose.”

Kunti shrugs. “Now we are Queens in the uncaring mountains, these fearless children our subjects.”

“I was fearless once," Madri tells her. "I was foolish.”


End file.
